Susan Mernit: Oakland, tech, health, wine, writing

Latest in: start-up stories

Patricia Handschiegel wrote a great post today about the emotional states entrepreneurs cycle through. Reading it, I saw myself working on People’s Software, and feel some of the same feelings working on the new thing we’re readying for 2009. Patricia’s identifies the following problem feelings as cycles entrepreneurs go through: 1. Feeling overwhelmed–that’s obvious, right?2.… Continue Reading

So with the departure of Caterina and Stewart from Yahoo, I don’t think much of anyone from the gang of pirates, as Caterina dubbed the ADD team back in 2005/6, is left. This is a large turn-over of the social media experts, not that anyone in the main product teams ever tapped any of their… Continue Reading

So I spent three days on the road to Northern Michigan, in a house with no wireless, reuniting with the BF and friends and..hiking…and sleeping. The whole time, my Blackberry kept me posted on the world: email, NYTimes, twitter, friendfeed, techmeme, and so on. The fact I could, even while I was on the road… Continue Reading

So, let’s see. Woke up at 4:45 today, birds singing, dog snoring, temptation to head out into the cool Boulder dawn on the walk path. Then I remembered all the things I was supposed to do tonight, and turned over and went back to bed. 6:30 awake. Reading email, drinking coffee. 7 am, finishing specs.… Continue Reading

“will be headed to Boulder Colorado this summer save 2 weeks when I’ll be back in NC for the beach and my wedding… I’m thinking this will be a pretty sweet summer if Tara and I can get into the long distance groove again. 3 months isn’t bad right? Right? Right. :-)” —Foodzie co-founder and… Continue Reading

For many people, Paul Graham is an essential touch point in building a new company. His perspectives have the ring of experience–and a lot of wisdom, so I’m compiling my own list of nuggets to absorb–here’s a batch of good points from the most recent post (worth a whole read). Release early: “Users hate bugs,… Continue Reading

Brad Feld pointed to a super astute and articulate post from VC Dave Feinleib on why startups go bloey. Cheat sheet summary is (and the whole thing is worth a read): They spend too much on sales and marketing before they’re ready. Spending on the sales and marketing operations means there is no return if… Continue Reading

“The problem we would soon find out was that having hundreds of active users in Chicago didn’t mean that you would have even two active users in Milwaukee, less than a hundred miles away, not to mention any in New York or San Francisco. The software and concept simply didn’t scale beyond its physical borders.”… Continue Reading

“I can’t think of a company that I am more impressed with than Google, but they are coming to grips with the fact that “startup energy” can’t be faked. There’s nothing quite like going from five people to fifty or a hundred.” _VC Fred Wilson, issuing an open recruitment call to Google employees who want… Continue Reading

In two weeks, I move out of the Silicon Valley area for a brief stint and head for the next great adventure. The work it’s taken to get to this moment and the degree of focus getting a start-up into even a semblance of operating mode is considerable, and I feel like the longer, more… Continue Reading